How rich would you be if you could spend every dollar twice? If you could buy a home on the Main Line - and get a Shore house thrown in for free? If your next slot-machine pull came with a complimentary lottery ticket - and both won? That's something like what Pennsylvania achieved last year with a chunk of its $24 billion state workers' pension system. In late 2002, the State Employees' Retirement System invested $2.3 billion in scores of unregulated investment pools called hedge funds, then set up Wall Street trading arrangements - "equity swaps" - to buy the future gains or losses of a similar-size investment in the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index.

Philadelphia's pension fund has spread its bets - just in time to take a small hit on the latest hedge-fund blowup. Four of the eight hedge-fund-management firms that the City of Philadelphia's pension board hired in the last year invested a total of $8 million in Amaranth Advisors L.P. Connecticut-based Amaranth warned clients this week that it may have lost 65 percent of its $9 billion in customers' investments due to bad bets on the price of...

Two for you, One for me . . .. Pennsylvania hasn't gotten rich yet from its $5 billion investment in hedge funds. But the hedge funds have. For every dollar they made for the state pension plan last year, hedge-fund operators collected more than 50 cents in fees, says a report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission by the manager of 55 of the plan's 183 hedge investments. That compares with less than 3 cents in fees for every dollar produced by the pension system's $20 billion in other investments (such as stocks)

Hedge funds, the unregulated investment pools that may have worsened the stock and bond plunge of February and March, need more study - but probably not new legislation, federal regulators testified yesterday. Hedge funds are not currently subject to federal regulations because they have fewer than 100 investors, generally wealthy individuals and instititions. Typically, they use investors' contributions as a base for large loans that can then be invested in securities and currency markets worldwide.

WASHINGTON - The Securities and Exchange Commission filed civil charges Friday against Steven A. Cohen, accusing the billionaire hedge-fund manager of failing to prevent insider trading at the fund he founded. Cohen founded and runs SAC Capital Advisors. The government has called the case one of the biggest insider-trading fraud cases in history. The SEC said Cohen failed to supervise two senior employees of SAC and prevent them from illegal insider trading. As a result of illegal trades by Cohen's hedge funds, the funds reaped profits and avoided losses of more than $275 million, the SEC said.

Last year, Pennsylvania taxpayers paid more than $350 million into the state's two largest public pension funds, the Public School Employees Retirement System (PSERS) and the State Employees Retirement System (SERS). This amount was needed to subsidize pension costs not covered by investment profits. The subsidy was necessary even though the two funds were paying more than $250 million in fees to 300 private money managers to manage them. Board members of both pension funds refuse to disclose the criteria used to select the people who manage what amounts to more than $70 billion in assets.

It wasn't just crazy talk Last month, we questioned hedge-fund honcho David Einhorn 's sanity in shelling out $200 million for a 33 percent stake in the Mets. We withdraw the question. Here's why: According to Forbes, if owners Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz do not pay back Einhorn's $200 million investment in three years, the hedge fund manager can obtain a 60 percent stake in the team for an additional $1. A buck. For a franchise that could be worth up to $1 billion.

The sale of The Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, and Philly.com will likely be announced Monday, according to several sources. A local investor group has spent much of the last two months negotiating to acquire PMN from its hedge-fund owners in a transaction valued at $55 million to $60 million, according to multiple reports. With paperwork still to be signed, delays are always possible at the 11th hour. The buyers of Philadelphia Media Network Inc. are a group of local investors, led by George E. Norcross III, executive chairman of Conner Strong & Buckelew, a South Jersey insurance brokerage; and Lewis Katz, former chairman of Interstate Outdoor Advertising.

Gartmore Global Investments could be split in two as its Ohio owner, Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co., considers shifting most of the West Conshohocken mutual-fund family into a publicly traded subsidiary. Gartmore, whose European hedge-fund operation was sold in September, employs 275 people, and has about $46 billion under management, spread among retail and institutional clients. People familiar with the matter said local Gartmore executives have proposed a management-led buyout of its $7 billion actively managed mutual-fund business, which those people said Nationwide does not want.